Cables, e.g. house wiring cables, are efficiently transported and stored by winding them up on a spool. As cables are relatively heavy, especially when wound up on a spool, the spool has to be strong enough to support the weight of the cable when fully loaded.
As cable spools often are stored and transported in the open air, they also have to tolerate a wide range of ambient temperatures without failing. In practice, the limiting factor of plastic spools is often their cold resistance, as a low ambient temperature can cause the plastic to fracture when stressed. For this reason, cable spools are subjected to a so-called “drop test” to determine their strength at low temperatures. This test is done by cooling a fully wound cable spool to a set temperature, usually −25° C. or lower, then dropping it under a variety of different conditions and checking for damages.
As more and more producers manage to provide cable spools which pass a standard drop test, the buyers of cable spools increase their demands and request spools that can tolerate an even lower temperature than what was previously possible. As such, there is a need for a cable spool which can pass a drop test at lower temperatures than current cable spools can, without being overly expensive or heavy.